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Every one-on-one meeting slot at the U.S. Air Force’s upcoming industry day for a new F-16 mission computer is already booked, and the service has now restricted access to the event’s sensitive briefings to companies certified to handle export-controlled military data. The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center’s F-16 program office will host the event […]View the full article

The U.S. Army will brief defense companies in Huntsville, Alabama, on Oct. 27-28 about its plans for a new short-range air defense system built on a pallet that can be loaded onto almost any vehicle, giving light and fast-moving units their own protection against drones, helicopters and attack aircraft. The industry day covers Maneuver-Short Range […]View the full article

Forterra and Hypercraft are showing a driverless off-road vehicle built for military resupply at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual meeting in Washington, pairing Hypercraft’s Razorback unmanned ground vehicle with Forterra’s AutoDrive self-driving system and a counter-drone turret from 9 Mothers. The companies say the vehicle is aimed at contested logistics, moving supplies through […]View the full article

German drone maker STARK and Thales Australia have agreed to fit STARK’s Cascade loitering munition to the Bushmaster armored vehicle, giving the Australian-built truck a launcher for one-way attack drones that the company says can hit targets up to 100 km (62 miles) away. The two companies signed a memorandum of understanding on Oct. 7 […]View the full article

Latvia’s armed forces have taken delivery of their first Hunter infantry fighting vehicle, a tracked armored vehicle based on General Dynamics European Land Systems’ ASCOD design, about 20 months after the country signed its first contract. The vehicle was handed over on Oct. 7 in the presence of Defense Minister Raivis Melnis, and GDELS said […]View the full article

The U.S. military’s V-22 Osprey program office and manufacturer Bell Boeing have brought 14 new companies into the tiltrotor’s supply chain as they work to keep the aircraft flying past 2055, after years of gearbox failures, fatal crashes and flight restrictions that have kept large parts of the fleet on the ground. The new suppliers […]View the full article

The U.S. Army has taken delivery of its first new locomotives in more than a decade, part of an effort to replace a rail fleet in which more than a third of the active engines are older than their 65-year expected service life. The Army’s Tank-automotive and Armaments Command, known as TACOM, said its rail […]View the full article

The U.S. Navy has put the destroyer USS Arleigh Burke (DDG 51) into dry dock at Navantia’s shipyard in Cadiz, Spain, the first time one of its Europe-based destroyers has been dry-docked in the region since the Navy began stationing them in Spain more than a decade ago. The ship entered the dock on Oct. […]View the full article

The U.S. Marine Corps has picked SteerBridge Strategies, a small veteran-owned company in Vienna, Virginia, to work on artificial intelligence tools meant to predict aircraft maintenance needs and manage aviation spare parts, after a selection process the service said took 34 days from approved requirement to vendor notification. The Marine Corps’ aviation acquisition office at […]View the full article

The U.S. State Department has approved a possible $300 million sale to Australia of the systems and support it needs to plan Tomahawk cruise missile strikes, adding mission-planning capability to the long-range missiles the Royal Australian Navy began acquiring in 2023. The package covers a Theater Mission Planning Center with its associated communications systems, the […]View the full article

The U.S. Department of War and the Missile Defense Agency have awarded Raytheon a multiyear contract worth up to $6.3 billion to build and sustain Standard Missile-3 Block IB interceptors, the ship- and land-launched missiles the U.S. Navy uses to shoot down ballistic missiles in space. The contract runs five years with two additional option […]View the full article

BLADE, the robotics company formerly known as HDT, said its Hunter WOLF unmanned ground vehicle has been selected for the second phase of GroundBreaker 1, a U.S. Department of War demonstration in which service members will put industry-built ground robots through field trials at Camp Grafton, North Dakota, on Oct. 19-23. The company said Hunter […]View the full article

The Javelin Joint Venture, the Lockheed Martin and Raytheon partnership that builds the Javelin anti-tank missile, says it has nearly doubled its annual production capacity for complete Javelin rounds over the past two years to keep up with demand from the U.S. military and foreign customers. Lockheed Martin announced the milestone on Oct. 8 but […]View the full article

The Sparrows Point Shipyard outside Baltimore has a history dating back to 1887. She is one of the many neglected and underused monuments to a once great industrial power just waiting for the right people with the right vision to return. I think we have it. Via Howard Altman and the good people at TWZ, …the Trump administration on Tuesday announced that Anduril is building a new two-million-square-foot facility in Baltimore designed to help speed up the production of Virginia class nuclear-powered attack submarines. The plant, dubbed Arsenal-2, will eventually produce components like torpedo tubes and spherical air flasks, which will then be sent to the two shipyards that build nuclear submarines, General Dynamics Electric Boat and Huntington Ingalls Industries’ Newport News Shipbuilding. Anduril’s plan to build complex submarine components is a huge leap for a company with a shipbuilding portfolio consisting of a limited number of smaller craft. The submarine component plant announcement was made as the Navy is struggling to keep up with its goal of producing two of these boats per year amid a wider issue of construction and delivery delays across the service. However, it will be years before the first Anduril-produced components are placed on a submarine… … “Today’s $6.6 billion investment represents the president’s commitment to restoring American maritime dominance by constructing new vessels in communities like Baltimore and across the country,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly told a group of reporters, including from TWZ, at a Tuesday morning press conference. Those funds include a $3.7 billion investment from Anduril to build and staff the new facility, and a contract worth up to $2.9 billion awarded to Anduril by the Navy to produce the components. … “Today’s $6.6 billion investment represents the president’s commitment to restoring American maritime dominance by constructing new vessels in communities like Baltimore and across the country,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly told a group of reporters, including from TWZ, at a Tuesday morning press conference. Those funds include a $3.7 billion investment from Anduril to build and staff the new facility, and a contract worth up to $2.9 billion awarded to Anduril by the Navy to produce the components. As Anduril is a privately held company, we can safely assume that none of that $2.9 billion from the government will be put towards stock buybacks. Ahem. Anyway, the Primes cannot get to 2.0, so we need more industrial capacity. If Anduril can bring it, bring it in style. So much is going on. If you are having trouble keeping up with all the good news happening in the shipbuilding space, you’re not alone. This next bit is incredibly smart. Before Arsenal-2 is up and running, Anduril said it plans to “manufacture critical Virginia class submarine components at a new 160,000-square-foot facility in Orange County, California, purpose-built to support key submarine construction processes and SUBSAFE-qualified production qualification [efforts].” The Orange County facility will give Anduril “a two-year operational head start to develop and validate manufacturing methods, production workflows, and quality systems before Arsenal-2 comes online,” the company noted. “It will support prototyping and production of Virginia-class test assets and critical maritime components, including torpedo tubes, while allowing Anduril to recruit and train the early workforce on the systems and standards that will ultimately scale at Arsenal-2. Once Arsenal-2 comes online, the Orange County facility will continue supporting broader maritime manufacturing efforts across Anduril’s industrial network.” In case you are wondering what Arsenal-1 is… Arsenal-2 follows the development of Anduril’s Arsenal-1 plant in Ohio, first announced two years ago. That five-million-square-foot facility, once fully up and running, will be able to “produce tens of thousands of autonomous weapons systems addressing the urgent needs of the United States and our allies,” the company said at the time. BZ to the New York Post … nice summary video. I would be remiss if I did not point out this one aspect of this project that gives me pause: the State of Maryland has a pernicious political and regulatory environment, not to mention labor rules. I assume this has been mitigated to an acceptable level in back-room discussions. That’s my planning assumption. If not…ick. I’m going to have to do a ‘Gulf of America’ post next week just to review with you what’s happening in Texas and Louisiana, but there is exciting “creative friction” happening all over the national security space. Here’s another example. As I mentioned on yesterday’s UNCLAS Read Board Podcast, you absolutely have to give a listen to the Ruthless Podcast interview with Joe Lonsdale on Rebuilding American Shipbuilding, AI, Data Centers, and America’s Industrial Boom. His comments about the Pentagon bureaucracy and the Primes are so spot on…you just need to hear it from him. The interview starts at about the 41 minute mark. This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Leave a comment Share View the full article

The Spanish Army has received its first Aracne counter-drone systems, delivered to the 71st Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment, which serves as the army’s lead unit for defending against drones. The army announced the delivery on Oct. 8. The system is built to detect drones, identify them and choose a response, and the regiment has already completed […]View the full article

Pakistan Air Force fighter jets are being used in strikes against Yemen’s Houthi rebels, a senior Pakistani military official told The New York Times, the first indication from inside Pakistan’s military that its air force has joined Saudi Arabia’s renewed war against the Iran-backed group. A second Pakistani official told the newspaper that Pakistan’s role […]View the full article

U.S. Air Force F-35A Lightning II stealth fighters flew alongside Moroccan F-16s on the opening day of the Marrakech Airshow, putting the jet in front of a country that has been reported to be interested in buying it and that already fields a growing list of American weapons. The airshow runs Oct. 7-10 at a […]View the full article

The U.S. Army has updated LOADOUT, its software for requesting and tracking military cargo and troop movements, with changes drawn from lessons of Operation Epic Fury, the U.S. campaign against Iran that began in February. The Army’s Combined Arms Support Command at Fort Lee, Virginia, which develops the system, said the latest upgrades respond to […]View the full article

The U.S. Army has started giving its long-range missile battalions their own heavy cranes, delivering two 40-ton all-terrain cranes to Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington, in late August so the units can reload missile canisters and maintain launchers in the field without hiring outside equipment. The Army’s Product Manager Engineer, Maintenance, Support Equipment said on Oct. […]View the full article

Uralvagonzavod, Russia’s main tank manufacturer and the only plant building new T-90M tanks, is now taking on major repairs of T-90Ms wrecked in Ukraine, work that analysts say was traditionally handled by military repair plants and now competes with the factory’s production of new tanks. A train carrying heavily damaged T-90Ms was photographed on its […]View the full article

TOTE Services has signed a contract with the U.S. Maritime Administration to manage construction of a new missile-tracking ship for the Missile Defense Agency, and has subcontracted Hanwha Philly Shipyard in Philadelphia to build it. The first ship is scheduled for delivery in 2030. The vessel is the first of the Missile Range Instrumentation Vessel […]View the full article

A Raytheon-Rafael joint venture in East Camden, Arkansas, has delivered the first Tamir interceptor for Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system built and assembled entirely in the United States, the Israeli Ministry of Defense said. The missile was handed over at a ceremony at the plant run by R2S, the joint venture between Raytheon and […]View the full article

The Defense Threat Reduction Agency plans to pay a Utah company to build a prototype four-legged robot that can walk into hazardous areas on its own and produce a live 3D map of dangerous gases, according to a contract notice the agency posted on October 7. DTRA, the U.S. Department of War agency responsible for […]View the full article

The U.S. Navy plans to award Raytheon a sole-source contract for low-rate initial production of the Joint Multiple Effects Warhead System, a new warhead that lets the Tomahawk cruise missile strike bunkers and other hardened targets, according to a notice Naval Air Systems Command posted on October 7. The contract would move the warhead program […]View the full article

The U.S. State Department has approved a possible sale of up to 2,020 Javelin anti-tank missiles and 200 launch units to Egypt, a package estimated at $832 million that would give the Egyptian military the shoulder-fired weapon for the first time. The approval, dated October 2 and sent to Congress as a formal notification, covers […]View the full article